Chapter 6 Piper
PIPER
“What was that noise?” I asked myself.
“Mommy, look!”
“What is it, Gavin?” I asked from the kitchen.
“There’s a bike on the sidewalk!”
I wiped my hands off onto a dish towel and slung it over my shoulder.
Gavin wanted a bedtime snack before bed, and I couldn’t blame him.
The walk alone plunged me into hunger, and he had been rolling around with Beau in the dog park as well.
I walked over to the window he was looking out of and peered across the road.
My childhood home sat on a mostly deserted road, with nothing but forestry and a ditch lining the other side.
I squinted my eyes and tried to take a good hard look at what my son was talking about, but it wasn’t until a car slowly crept down the road that I saw it.
An overturned bike across the street from our house.
“Gavin, go sit at the kitchen table. I’ve got your snack ready,” I said.
“Can I have the bike?” he asked.
“No, honey. Now go eat. We have to get you cleaned up for bed,” I said. “And take Beau with you.”
“Come on, Beau,” he said.
“But don’t feed him!”
“Aww, but he’s hungry,” Gavin said.
“That’s why Beau has his own food bowl. You stay at that kitchen table, all right?”
“Okay.”
I pulled the dishrag off my shoulder and set it down next to the door.
Then I stepped onto my porch and started across the road.
I hoped it was only an abandoned bike. But the doctor in me knew better.
I’d heard a commotion from the kitchen. Something that sounded like a trash can turning over or a tree falling in the distance.
And after the throng of motorcycles that came cruising through, my worst fear was that someone was overturned into the ditch.
“Hello?” I asked as I approached the bike. “Is anyone down there?”
The handlebars were pretty dinged up and the outer characteristics of the bike were dented and scratched.
I pulled out my phone and turned on its flashlight so I could get a better look.
The doctor in me was screaming. I just knew someone was in that ditch.
But I couldn't hear a sound and I couldn't see anything as I swiped my phone’s light left to right.
“Hello?” I called out again. “Anyone down there?”
Then, my phone swiped across a body.
A body with a very recognizable face.
“Holy fuck,” I said.
I scrambled into the ditch as I tucked my phone into my shirt.
The light shone in front of me as I knelt down, my hands trembling as I took him in.
Dirty blonde hair. Strong, chiseled features.
His six-foot-four body was something I’d never be able to forget.
I placed my hand underneath his nose and felt him breathing, then I felt for his pulse before my hands wrapped around his neck.
“Rock,” I said with a whisper. “What the hell have you done?”
“Mom!?”
“Gavin?” I asked.
“Where are you?”
“Get back in the house, Gavin!” I yelled.
“But Mom-”
“NOW!”
I heard my front door slam as I drew in a deep breath.
My fingers started pressing into Rock’s neck to check if he had any sort of neck injury.
I wrapped myself around him and felt up the divots of his back, trying to see if he had broken anything before I had a chance to move him.
And I ignored the blatant reaction my body was having to his.
Trembling hands. A cold sweat. Electricity surging through my veins.
I felt my hands get clammy for the first time in years, which only made me grow more frustrated.
“Of course, it had to be you,” I said to myself.
After fully satisfying myself and relenting to the fact that Rock didn’t seem to be seriously injured, I rolled him over onto his back.
I had no idea how the hell I was going to hoist this massive man out of the ditch, but I had to try.
I bent down and wrapped his arm around me, then pushed with all my might to get him upright from the ground.
Then, a groan trickled down my neck.
“Rock?” I asked.
“Fuck,” he said.
His voice rumbled over my body and I felt my knees grow weak.
“Rock, I need you to help me, okay?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“You’re in a ditch. I need you to stay awake long enough for me to get you out,” I said.
“Uh… huh.”
I looked over at him and watched his eyes slowly peel open.
Those steely gray eyes that reminded me of a thick and rolling thunderstorm glanced back at me before his brows stitched together.
The eyes of my son staring back at me in the form of a man I’d never really let go.
Of course, he was the one to crash his motorcycle.
I hadn’t recognized it. His bike looked very different from when I rode on its back five years ago.
He looked at me for the longest time as the world seemed to stop turning, then his head dropped back to my shoulder and his body went limp.
“No, no, no, no, no! Rock. Come on. I need your help.”
I took a step forward and felt him stumble with all the remaining energy he had left.
After walking up the embankment and getting to the corner of the road, he passed out again.
I heaved him over my back and locked my arms with his, then bent over and waddled across the road.
Fuck. This man was a beast. And the only thing moving me across the road with any sort of strength was the adrenaline running through my veins.
I saw my son standing at the window by the door with his jaw dropped open, and I paused in the driveway to take it all in.
This was the first time Gavin was seeing his father.
None of this could have come at a worse time.